


All the Soft Parts You Can Keep

by dharmaavocado



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9579638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dharmaavocado/pseuds/dharmaavocado
Summary: This is what they are taught: there is no death only the Force.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Mountain Goats song _The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones_
> 
> This was written in response to that [song](http://dharmaavocado.tumblr.com/post/156638858667/onemountaingoatssongaday-the-ultimate-jedi-who#notes). I recommend you listen to it first since this may or may not make sense without it.

i.

This is what they are taught: there is no death only the Force.

It is their first lesson and their final trial. Everything else they learn—unhooking attachments from their chests, carving out their faith with teeth and skin, doing and trying and failing—is merely a way to pass the time until, one by one, they arrive. They must shed their weight, pare themselves down to the quick, and when that last bit is swallowed, only then will they feast.

 

 

ii.

Pain is a well loved pet, and Adi Gallia strokes its spines and whispers endearments into its ragged ears as the Zabrak’s horns dig into her abdomen and splits her open. It hurts, as it should, but then it’s quick and it’s quiet, and she greets death with relief.

She stands amidst dust piled high, bones laid out in concentric circles spiraling out further and further, and then further still. At the center waits a figure dressed in the robes of a Jedi master. She cannot see the face, if there even is one.

 _There is no death,_ she says, stepping carefully over the curve of femurs and ulnas, the uncoupled vertebra. _There is only the Force._

 _Yes,_ the Jedi agrees. Its hood holds the entirety of space.

 _What do you want?_ she asks. _I’ve given up my hate, my anger, my love. What’s left?_

It says, _Those you can keep._

She looks at the circles, at the shape of things, and said, _I see. I suppose you want them now?_

 _Yes,_ said the Jedi and lowers the hood.

The masters of old were half right. There is the Force.

 

 

iii.

There is grief, and it is the last thing that Plo Koon tastes on his tongue. He swallows it as his fighter fails, as he scatters through the space between stars.

When it’s over, when the last of him burns out, Plo walks along the stark curves of bones that curl around the Jedi. He touches the clip on his belt where his lightsaber once hung. Gone now, of course. They are past that, in this place.

 _I always wondered if you were just a parable we taught the young ones,_ Plo says. _I suppose this is my answer._

The Jedi keeps its silence, although Plo does not mistake it for inattention. There is nothing it does not see.

 _The price?_ Plo asks.

 _You know it,_ says the Jedi. Its hands, long and spindly, unfold in a benediction. _Will you pay?_

Plo unhooks his mask and removes the protections from his eyes. There is nothing left to hurt.

 _Yes,_ he says, and holds out his own open hands, an offering in return.

In the end, everyone pays what they’re worth.

 

 

iv.

His bones have been steeped in exhaustion, and Obi-Wan can no more kill Anakin then he can eat his own heart. His body is a weight and it is a kindness when he at last lays it down.

It is with no little disappointment to be surrounded by circles of bones, sweeping out through the emptiness. Its strange beauty brings a small measure of comfort.

 _There’s more?_ Obi-Wan asks the Jedi master before him, its hands tucked into the drape of its sleeves. _I thought I was done._

The Jedi frees one hand and gestures to the bones at their feet. A reprimand, but not an unkind one.

 _I was a poor Jedi, in the end,_ he says. _I never managed my attachments._

The Jedi lifts and drops one shoulder, as if it is all the same to him. Obi-Wan supposes it is.

 _No use delaying the inevitable,_ says Obi-Wan, although he has done just that for twenty years. He steps over the pelvis, the tibia, the zygomatic arch, careful in his movements, for he knows these bones.

 _Well,_ he says, standing before the Jedi, _shall we get on with it?_

Cool hands cup his face, and Obi-Wan stares into the recesses of the hood.

 _Oh,_ he says.

 _Give once more,_ the Jedi says, _and then you may rest._

Obi-Wan keeps his eyes open and gives, one last time.

 

 

v.

Yoda feels small before the Jedi. He is old and he has seen men die and he has cut down even more. If there is judgment to be passed then it is overdue. He has spent decades avoiding it, but there is time now. There is time for everything.

 _Dead, I am,_ he says, and the in the recesses of the hood there is movement, like a planet orbiting a sun. _I know these._ He reaches down and touches the fragile metatarsals by his foot.

The Jedi circles closer, its robes sweeping over the bones, reshaping them in its wake.

 _You judgment,_ he says, _what is it to be?_

The Jedi kneels and bows its head. The edge of its hood brushes along the point of Yoda’s ear.

 _There will be a feast,_ the Jedi says.

 _But first,_ says Yoda when the Jedi reaches out and touches the skin over his thoracic cavity.

 _But first,_ the Jedi agrees, _we must sacrifice._

 _Too many sacrifices, there have been,_ Yoda says.

_There can be no respite without it._

Yoda inclines his head, and says, _And what have you sacrificed, hm?_

 _You,_ says the Jedi.

And Yoda smiles at the truth of it and does his part to earn his place at the feast.

 

 

vi.

There is nothing left to Anakin now that his anger has drained away. Once, he had been human. Once, he had been many things.

 _I don’t have what you need,_ he tells the Jedi. There are bones in his hands—ribs, knuckles, the cracked hyoid—and a distant light in the hood. He doesn’t know which to follow.

 _I did what you asked,_ he says.

The Jedi plucks the bones from his grip even as Anakin struggles to hold them. He never learned the lesson of letting go. He coaxes the machinery of his body to collapse downward, complicated and painful, as the Jedi precisely lays flat the bones: manubrium, jaw, malleus.

There is dust on the Jedi’s hands and on Anakin’s tongue. He swallows it down, and says, _Obi-Wan told me there is no death._

 _There is me,_ says the Jedi. His hands are empty and Anakin knows his duty.

 _Did I do enough?_ he asks, feeling like that young boy who once took Obi-Wan’s offered hand so many years ago. _Can I come home now?_

There is the press of lips against his forehead before the Jedi opens its jaw. He goes home.

 

 

vii.

Luke is the first of the new Jedi and the last of the old. It is an unenviable mantle to wear and an ill fitting one at that. It is time to shed it like old skin. It is time to grow something new.

He looks over the bones, the long unbroken stretch, the way they part and come together, and he says, _This is us. All of this is us._

 _Yes,_ says the Jedi.

 _May I?_ asks Luke, and the Jedi nods.

Luke takes his time and walks the entirety of the path those before him cleared. When he reaches the end of it, the peace has made a home in his bones.

 _There is only the Force,_ he says, and he looks past the darkness of the hood to the true face within. _There is only you._

 _Yes,_ says the first and last Jedi. _And now there is you._

It takes off the robe and folds it carefully before passing it into Luke’s waiting hands.

 _You know what to do,_ it says.

The robe is no different than the one he wore in life, and so Luke sets it aside; it’s time for a renewal.

The problem with circles, Luke thinks as he overlooks the great shape, is that they feed back into themselves. Nothing is learned and nothing can grow. It repeats, eternal.

 _It’s time for something new,_ Luke says. _You will be the first._

 _Thank you,_ says the Jedi, and then sighs as Luke takes its bones and carefully and thoughtfully grinds them down to a fine powder that he sows into the soil.

Under his care, pale green things push up into the light.

 

 

viii.

This is what they are taught: there is no death only the Force.

This is what they learn: there is death and there is the Force and from their bodies they grow new and better things.


End file.
